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Goofs
Movie goofs, errors, mistakes. General *Despite being a high-ranking Nazi officer, Heinrich Himmler is curiously missing from the film. *Until after WWII, modern foreign languages were not commonly taught in Germany. Thus, few if any German soldiers spoke any English, let alone American English. In fact, fluent English would almost certainly indicate intelligence training, which regular soldiers and police officers did not receive. *During the whole movie the character of Diane Kruger is referred as "fräulein" in the subtitles that translate the German language into English. The correct grammar would be "Fräulein", the first letter being a capital. It is a noun like Herr or Frau (Mister or Mistress). *Apart from a few essential occupations, a French civilian in Paris would not be working outdoors after dark. There was a strict curfew from September 1940 until after Paris was liberated. *Hans Landa, who is an Austrian-German SS officer, is shown to be wearing the Germanic Proficiency Runes - an award which would have been impossible for him to earn. The Germanic Proficiency Runes were intended solely for the Germanic-SS, which were collaborationist groups set up in Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway to mirror the General-SS in Germany. The runes were also very rare and only awarded to a handful of foreign SS collaborators at the end of 1944. The Germanic Proficiency Runes were never awarded to members of the regular SS in Austria and Germany. Chapter One *The scene of the killing of Shosanna's family, in the opening sequence of this film, is set in May, 1941 - one year into the German occupation of France. In reality, the rounding-up of French Jews in the German occupation zone of France only commenced in mid-1942, and the rounding-up of French Jews in the Vichy controlled zone of France commenced in 1943. Thus, the Dreyfus's execution in this film happens more than a year earlier than what it would have in reality, depending on what zone of France the family was hiding in. *In the opening scene the small convoy winds up the road to the farm house, all the fields can be seen to be modern crops - not pasture as suggested in the plot - with 'tramlines' where modern sprayers have driven through the wheat, clearly visible. *In the opening scenes at the farmhouse, it can be clearly seen that the fields have been farmed using mechanized farm equipment - the crop marks from spraying from tractors, for instance. Rural France before the 1960s in general and during the war in particular, was not mechanized in any meaningful way until an influx of wealth from Great Britain and Germany via the Common Agricultural Policy of the Common Market/European Community/European Union. It would all have been horse drawn or manual. *In the first scene, when Perrier's daughter is spreading a sheet over a clothesline, a clothespin appears on the sheet between shots. *In the opening scene, as the German patrol approaches La Padite's farmhouse, they drive around the same bend three times. *When Landa arrives at LaPadite's farm, one of his subordinates refers to him as "Herr Oberst". As an SS officer, Landa would not be addressed using an Army rank. His correct title would be "Standartenführer". *In the first chapter, Col. Landa's peaked hat is missing the Silver Braid just above the brim. In later chapters, the braid is attached to the hat. *Standartenfuhrer Landa is wearing the correct rank patches on his collar, but they are pointing in the wrong direction. The top of the oak-leaf should point away from the head. Change them over and they would be correct. **He is actually wearing the correct rank patches on his collar, but in some scenes they are pointing in the wrong direction. *Landa enters the farmer's house and talks to the girls but a side angle shows his mouth not moving, despite sound coming out. It only starts moving when he says the word 'Monsieur'. *When in the farmer's house, Landa's gloves on the table keep changing from wrinkled to straight depending on the angle. *Landa says to LaPadite that Hitler fetched him from Austria. But Austria was a part of the German Reich at the time and was called "Ostmark". *At one point, when Hans Landa is talking to Perrier LaPadite, there is a moth that visibly lands on Landa's glass and climbs to the top of it. When the camera angle changes, the moth is gone. *La Padite starts his pipe and it should produce a decent billow of smoke to some of the air, but he soon puts it down and there is no trace of smoke anywhere in the small farmhouse. *When Landa is at the table, there's an iron nail on the table, used to crush the tobacco, that moves around depending on the angle. *As Col. Landa is talking to Perrier, the glass of milk he was drinking, repeatedly moved positions back and forth, and the level of milk in the glasses changes. *When Colonel Landa is sitting at the kitchen table with Perrier LaPadite, the shadow changes shape and "density" and sometimes disappears completely during different shots from the same camera angle. When Colonel Landa starts writing on the piece of paper, the shadow nearly covers half the table and is very dark, but then when we see the same camera angle a few seconds later, there's no shadow on the table. It then reappears again but of different length in another shot from the same angle about a minute later. *Landa mentions Reinhard Heydrich as being called "the Hangman" by the people of Prague. This conversation takes place sometime in May 1941. However, Heydrich was appointed Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia (which includes Prague) on 27 September 1941. In May 1941, few Czechs likely even knew who Heydrich was. **During the same conversation, Landa refers posthumously to Heydrich, in his conversation with the French farmer and mentions that he had been assassinated; however, Heydrich was attacked and mortally wounded on the 27th of May, 1942, and died a week later on the 4th of June, 1942 - a year later than the time in which this scene of the film is set. *When Landa is about to kill the Jews in the farmer's house, he stands up and the box of matches keeps changing positions on the table. *When Col. Hans Landa's men shoot through the floor boards in LaPadite's house, the resultant bullet holes in the boards are funnel shaped, being larger in diameter at the top and smaller diameter at the bottom. In reality, the opposite would be true. The point of entry would be just a clean round hole with no funnel shape carved in the boards as seen from above the floor boards. *Right before Landa's men fire their guns through the floor the hidden charges in the floor board holes are seen being set off nowhere near the direction of the gun barrel. **When the the second floorboard charge sets off, the number 031 is seen in the middle of the blast, which is no doubt the number of the pyrotechnic charge. Chapter Two *Lt Aldo Raine is wearing the 1st Special Service Force unit insignia, yet later he is referred to as a "Secret Service" officer. Raine could be called a "Special Service" or a "Strategic Service" (OSS) officer, but not "Secret Service", which is the organization founded in 1865 and responsible for guarding the US President since 1894. *During close-ups of Lt. Aldo Raine as he's addressing the eight Jewish-American soldiers, an ear piercing hole is clearly seen in his left earlobe. Men, especially soldiers, did not pierce their ears in the 1940s. *When Lt. Raine introduces himself, he claims he took part in the invasion of Sicily. However, the map shown behind Adolf Hitler shows an incorrect representation of Axis forces/control for the time (showing North Africa and Sicily as still under Axis control). *Lt. Aldo Raine says he is from the Smoky Mountains, and later from Maynardville, Tennessee. Maynardville is not actually in the Smoky Mountains, but in one of the East Tennessee valleys between the mountains (some distance north of the Smoky Mountains). *When Lt Raine is speaking to the Basterds and says "We're into one thing", he is standing at the right side (Samm Levine's) of the formation. An instant later, when he says "Killin' Nazis", he is at the other end. *During Adolf Hitler's first appearance we see a map of Europe and where Turkey is supposed to be, reads "Osmanien" (written in Fraktur, making the "s" look like a "t"). The Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1923 and Turkey was established in that region, approximately 20 years before when this movie is supposed to be taking place. *In the ditch scene, while Lt. Aldo Raine questions the first of his three German prisoners Sgt. Werner Rachtman, the latter's Close Combat clasp (worn over his left breast pocket) appears and disappears between scenes. *When Hugo Stiglitz is introduced, we see a newspaper. There are initially 2 rows of 6 officers pictured on the front page, but when the paper's shown in close-up there are 7 officers' pictures in one row. *When Sgt. Donowitz (a.k.a. The Bear Jew) beats the captured Nazi to death under the bridge, we see blood on the ground near the corpse, but when it switches to an overhead shot, the blood has disappeared. *In the scene where the Bear Jew beats the German Sergeant to death with a baseball bat, the sergeant's head basically explodes into a mass of blood at the end of the beating. In a later shot, the sergeant's body is shown lying on the ground with the head intact. *After Sgt. Donowitz ("The Bear Jew") kills the German soldier with the bat, he struts about shouting a "play-by-play" account of his action. During this, he uses the phrase "He Ballgame went yard!", meaning hitting a home run. The term "goes yard" was not used for a home run until the 1990s. Chapter Three *Shosanna is introduced working on her marquee in Paris, "4 years later". Yet this occurs in 1944 and the previous scene in 1941. That's 3 years, not 4. *When Shoshanna first meets Zoller, there's a strand of hair falling by her left cheek which appears or disappears depending on the angle focusing. *When Shosanna meets Zoller, she is taking the red letters of the board at the cinema and throwing them down to a canvas sheet on the ground. The letters move around on the canvas throughout the scene when the camera angles shows Zoller from above. *Shosanna is dropping the letters onto the ground while talking to Zoller. In the last two or three high angle shots before she descends the ladder, they're suddenly positioned differently from how they were before. *Shosanna and Zoller are talking outside the cinema. It is supposed to be June in Paris and you can see them breathing like it is winter time. *When Emanuelle is updating the sign outside the cinema, the red characters are see-through, and she throws them at a stack from the top of the ladder. This implicates they are made from a see-through, hard to break material like poly-carbonate. These characters would not have been available during WWII. *When Shosanna is on the ladder for the second time, before the Germans come to take her, she is cleaning black letters. She cleans 2 different letters, one of them a 'u', another one, and the 'l' remains uncleaned. The next shot you can see only the 'l' has been cleaned. *The movie theater is lit entirely by fluorescent lighting; such technology was unavailable during World War II except for the war effort (i.e. lighting factories). *In the scene in which Colonel Landa and Shosanna are talking in the café, Landa orders an espresso for himself, along with a glass of milk for Shosanna and two strudels. When the order arrives on a tray, the cup of espresso is seen briefly in one shot. The film then cuts to a close-up of the tray, and the espresso has disappeared, despite no-one having put it down. In the next shot of the table, the espresso has appeared beside Landa. *The second time the server scoops up some of the cream, it falls off of the fork, but still ends up on Landa's dessert. *When Hans Landa is talking to Shoshanna after ordering strudel for her he offers her a cigarette and lights one for himself. His cigarette doesn't appear to be lit when he removes his lighter but in the next shot there is still a centimeter of ash on it. Chapter Four *When the Lieutenant meets the General and Sir Winston Churchill, the strings are hanging out of his beret which is the French style, not the American or British style (unless the Director was trying to show the character's lack of military bearing). *When we first see him in uniform, Hicox is wearing a beret with a short 'tail' (the end of the drawstring used to tighten the beret). This is indeed a feature of military berets in some countries, but not in Britain. *Fenech salutes with no head dress on, which is incorrect British military custom. He would instead acknowledge the salute with a nod. The same is true for the German soldiers in the bar. *When the British soldier Lt. Archie Hicox is introduced to his superiors, he is instructed to "stand at ease" which is still a formal position, but Hicox "stands easy", which allows him to relax arms and move the feet. *Lt Hicox said prior to the war he wrote a book about the film director GW Pabst, who described as being German. If Hicox really wrote Pabst's biography, he would know that Pabst was Austrian. *In the Operation Kino briefing scene, in the shot where General Fenech and Lt. Hicox drink to "down with Hitler", Fenech is holding his staff in his left hand along with his blue file folder. In the next shot, as Fenech asks Hicox if he is familiar with German cinema under the Third Reich, the staff is suddenly no longer in his hand, but being held pinned under his left arm. In the following shot, Fenech is instantaneously once again holding both the folder and staff in his left hand. *Lt. Archie Hicox uses the phrase "Paris, when it sizzles," which was a lyric from Cole Porter's play "Can-Can" ("I Love Paris"), not written until the 1950s. Porter coined the phrase, he didn't just adopt it from general usage. *Hugo Stiglitz is shown slowly sharpening his knife. At the end of each stroke there is an ominous "shhhlick" sound as he twists the blade with a flick. This would actually remove the edge he is attempting to sharpen, and dull the blade. *In the first scene set in Nadine, we get a glimpse of the tavern exterior. However, upon closer inspection, the top level of the spiral staircase and the bottom level of the outside downstairs do not match: the entry door seen from outside would be on the tavern floor level, removing the need for the spiral stairs and the spiral staircase top would actually be above the street level. *As the German soldiers in the bar play the card game one of them is "Winnetou", a fictional Apache created by Karl May and a very popular book series. When he guesses his character he stands up and imitates a gesture with his arm - moving it away from his heart saying "I am Winnetou!" This gesture was used first by actor Pierre Brice playing Winnetou in Treasure of Silver Lake, released in 1962. *During the card game, Bridget's card reads "Genghis Khan". However, since the game was played entirely by Germans, they would have used the German spelling, "Dschingis Khan". (Also, when leaving the table, Bridget comments that she never would have guessed it and uses the English pronunciation, even though she's speaking German.) *In the tavern scene there is a female Nazi sergeant. There were no female soldiers in the Third Reich, except of helpers for AA guns, medical orderlies, and aircraft mechanics in the Luftwaffe. *At various times during the movie the distinctive enamel decorated Perrier-Jouet cuvée Belle Epoque champagne bottle is shown. Although this bottle design was created in 1902 by Emile Galle it was quickly forgotten. In 1964, Pierre Ernst discovered four of these bottles and the design was re-released two years later to celebrate the seventieth birthday of Duke Ellington. *When Eric first talks to Bridget, he calls her "Frau" instead of "Fräulein". "Frau" implies she is married and/or elderly, which Bridget isn't. **When he speaks to her, twice, he calls her "Frau" and in between that time he refers to her as "Fräulein". *During the card game, Bridget's card reads "Genghis Khan". However, since the game was played entirely by Germans, they would have used the German spelling, "Dschingis Khan". (Also, when leaving the table, Bridget comments that she never would have guessed it and uses the English pronunciation, even though she's speaking German.) *The Gestapo officer in the tavern is shown wearing a M1932 Allgemeine-SS uniform, which was made famous by the SS in the 1930s. A Gestapo agent would not have worn one, especially in 1944, as its use had been abolished in 1942. They would have instead appeared either in civilian attire or in an SS-style gray field uniform similar to Landa's. *In one of the shots in the pub scene, when the German major is sitting at the officers' table, Lt. Archie Hicox has his right arm around Bridget von Hammersmark, but in the next scene his arm is on the table. *In the scene where they are playing 20 questions, the barmaid and the barman are invited to join in, in the next shot they are back behind the bar and then a few moments later they are playing 20 questions again. *After Mathilda has taken Bridget's place to join the quiz game with the soldiers, bartender Eric leaves the counter and walks over to assist her. He is shown standing left behind her. Then the camera cuts to the officers' table. In the background Eric is shown standing behind the counter again. *The card the SS officer sticks to his head in the bar is initially quite low over his eyes and at a slight angle. Later in the scene it's moved slightly higher up and straighter, without him touching it. *The Brigitte Horney card on Archie Hilcox's forehead changes direction in between takes. *The level of beer in the glass, shaped like a boot, of the Nazi-officer in the basement pub, changes between shots. *In the bar, when Dieter Hellstrom has successfully found out that King Kong was on his playing card, he takes the card off and puts it on the table. In the next shot, filming Cpl. Wicki over the shoulder of Hellstrom, the playing card is still on the forehead of Hellstrom. *As the conversational confrontation between Hicox and Hellstrom gets more and more heated in the basement tavern, there is a scene where Hicox's right hand is in an arched position on the table, but the next scene it's flat and not visible. This happens a couple of times. *When Bridget von Hammersmark is in the pub, and the SS Officers are offering them a 33-year-old whiskey, you can see that the beer foam in the glass on the table is changing between the shots. *In the tavern scene, when the SS officer tells Lt. Hickox that he is no more German than the scotch they are drinking, Hickox is sitting back against the back of his chair. In the following shot, which shows Eric the bartender slowly reaching for his shotgun, Hickox can be seen in the background leaning forward in his chair. In the next shot, Hickox is suddenly once again sitting back in his chair as he was before. It is implausible that Hickox would have or even could have changed seating positions so quickly or abruptly. *In the basement scene, when Eric, the bartender reaches for his gun, in the background, you see Hicox and Stiglitz with their guns aimed at Hellstrom. At that point in the scene, however, Hicox hasn't yet revealed that he's been aiming his gun at him, nor has Stiglitz made his move to Hellstrom's crotch. *In the basement bar scene, Stiglitz's hand is under the SS officer's arm. When he shoots, his arm is over the officer's arm. *When Lt. Hicox says "And seeing as I might be rapping on the door momentarily", he uses "momentarily" in the sense of "in a moment". In the British English of the time, "momentarily" would have exclusively meant "for a moment", so he would not have used that word. *In the tavern scene, when Bridget von Hammersmark is shot she falls backwards in her chair to the floor; but a moment later, when we see the room after the shoot out, her chair is still upright at the table. *After the shootout in the La Louisiane tavern, Bridget von Hammersmark's silver earrings completely disappear only to later reappear in the scene at the veterinary hospital shortly thereafter. *Stiglitz's eyelid moves several times when Landa examines him, hours after he's been killed. *After the bar-basement fight, when Landa is identifying soldiers, he says that Wicki "immigrated to the United States" when he should have said that he "emigrated", as Landa was standing in the country from which Wicki left. If he has been in the US, the country to which Wicki emigrated, then he would have been correct in saying that Wicki "immigrated to the United States". **Also, Landa states that Wicki was a German Jew who emigrated to the US before the war. However, Wicki is neither a 'typical' Jewish name, nor a German name but in fact a typical (and fairly common) name in Central Switzerland. If he was a Swiss Jew, Wicki would have most probably fled to Switzerland, but Landa doesn't mention anything in this direction concerning Wicki's family name and fate, which seems improbable since Wicki is a foreign sounding name to Germans and since Landa cares to show off his military intelligence. Chapter Five *Shoshanna's red dress worn has "invisible" plastic coil zippers inserted in the sleeve ends and center back, a technology that did not exist during WW2. Invisible zippers are a clean solution but no doubt, the designer didn't anticipate a close up of the inside sleeve, nor the evidential zipper pull at the dress center back. *When Shosanna is splicing her special film into the print of STOLZ DER NATION, a close-up shows that both prints have dual bilateral variable-area optical soundtracks. This type of soundtrack is still used today, but wasn't introduced until 1954. An optical soundtrack prepared in 1944 would more likely be of the variable-density or unilateral variable-area types. *At the premier, Pvt. Zoller is in his full dress uniform with all his decorations. He wears the Knight's Cross with oak leaves, swords, and cut diamonds around his neck and the Iron Cross 2nd class on his chest. However, conspicuously absent is the Iron Cross 1st class, which he certainly would've worn to the occasion (see where Adolf Hitler wears his), and which is necessary to receive the Knight's Cross. Without the 1st class award, he could not have received a Knight's Cross let alone with oak leaves, swords, and cut diamonds. *At the premiere, Pvt. Zoller wears his Knight's Cross around his neck but when in uniform in all other scenes, he is without it. The Knight's Cross was one of the highest orders the Third Reich bestowed upon soldiers and when in any uniform Zoller would have worn it around the neck. *The German sniper's name is Friedrich Zoller, and he is called that, but the movie posters spell his name in the Anglicized version as Frederick. *The highly flammable nitro film of the period plays a major role in the film's showdown. However, in the projection booth, projectors are show with visible running film reels, which would have been totally unthinkable at that time. All projectors were equipped with fire proof boxes in which the reels would run. These boxes had only small windows for the projectionist to check for the amount of run off or taken up film. If the film started burning, only the few inches actually running through the mechanics would be affected, not the major portions in the fire proof boxes. *In scene when Bridget von Hammersmark is being strangled you can see crack in the plaster on her leg, allowing her to take it off. Best seen in shot taken from under her feet, right before she stops struggling.http://www.moviemistakes.com/film7857 *When Landa strangles Bridget, there is a shot from behind Landa as Bridget collapses and both of her arms are flung outwards onto the floor. After a few more shots there is another view from behind Landa and we see Bridget's arms fall onto the floor again. *When Shosanna takes the specially prepared fourth reel (with her 'surprise' for the Nazis) out of the case, her hair is down and hanging loose. In the next shot, just a few seconds later, as she is putting the reel on the projector, her hair is pinned back. Some time after this, when the bell on her projector tinkles to let her know it's time to switch reels, she glances out the projector porthole at the audience and we see her hair is again down and hanging loose. As she pulls the lever to activate the reel, just a few seconds after this, her hair is once again pinned back, remaining this way throughout her final scene. *In the tavern scene in which Landa sits across from Raine and Utivich, one of the black studs on Raine's tuxedo shirt is missing but appears in the next shot. *When Colonel Landa approaches Bridget Von Hammersmark at the premiere the camera shows her with her hands on her hips as she says, "Colonel Landa, it's been years. Dashing as ever I see". In the very next shot she and Landa are holding hands when they kiss on the cheek. *When Landa has Raine and Uitivich as prisoners, and is gesturing toward the telephone, the handset is connected to the phone with a perfectly coiled black cord that didn't exist until after 1960. *When Colonel Landa offers to surrender in exchange for not warning Hitler he is about to burned alive in the Paris cinema he points to a telephone with a rotary dial with alpha-numeric characters. That was a feature of North American telephones after WWII. *Landa claims that if they Basterds want to end the war they must kill Hitler, Goebbels, Göring and Bormann, however he completely forgets Himmler and Karl Dönitz, who are just as important as the former four. *When Colonel Landa speaks with Lieutenant Raine and Private Utivich about chances being "999-point-999 out of one million" it appears he misspoke. However, when counting in Germany, a period is used where a comma would be used in the English world, and vice-versa. He did mean 999,999 out of one million but mistranslated. *Reflection of camera and operator is visible on the short wave radio mike that Landa's holding when speaking to the American general. *When Lt. Raine is speaking to his general over the radio, the general ends the transmission by saying, "Over and out." This is incorrect radio protocol in the U.S. military. The proper procedure is for the person ending the transmission to simply say, "Out". *When Donny goes to see if Hitler has arrived, we see the sentry that will be later shot by Omar, and other one with shorter hair. However, when Zoller leaves the opera box, the other guard gets replaced by a bald man. It's unknown how he got replaced, considering that moments after Donny goes back in the auditorium to call Omar with him, Marcel locks the cinema and it's unlikely that he could of done that if the sentries would wander around. *Shoshanna bids goodbye to Marcel before he goes behind the screen to light the cellulose and die. But at that point, there's nothing planned for her to do in the projection booth. She could have been with him at the end, unless she was expecting Friedrich's visit. *When Fredrich leaves the opera box during the film premiere to go to the projection booth, he walks out of the box and turns to the left. Since he was on the right-hand side of the theater, this would mean he was heading in the direction of the screen/backstage and away from the booth. A few moments later, we see him walk up a flight of stairs where drape hangs off to the left and a masonry wall stands to the right, with the stairs opening to a set of catwalks to the left. The only area this would make sense is in the backstage area of the theater, again opposite the projection booth. Once he does make it to the booth, he arrives at the door on the right side, the same side as the opera box he was in is on. The turn to the left and walk up the flight of stairs makes no sense. *Shoshanna kills Zoller, then approaches him and kicks a film can, which moves farther away. In the next shot, the can has moved backwards and is close to her ankle again. *After Donny and Omar kill Adolf Hitler and Josef Goebbels in the Opera box, as they begin to fire randomly into the panicking crowd, Donny's white shirt is clean and spotless. Each successive view of him as he continues firing into the crowd, shows his shirt becoming more and more blood-spattered even though the crowd he is firing into, is more than ten feet below him on the floor of the auditorium. The only people close enough to spatter his shirt with blood were Hitler, Goebbels and the woman companion, who they'd already killed before any blood is shown on Donny's shirt. *In the final theater scene, when the moviegoers are fleeing the fire and the Basterds are firing from above into the crowd, a woman extra gets shot in the back several times and when she falls forward (dead or dying, presumably), she grabs on to her hat to make sure it doesn't fall off.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0361748/goofs *In the final scene between Aldo and Landa before he carves the swastika into the German's forehead, Pitts' tie changes three times. First scene it is on both sides of his neck. Second scene it has disappeared from the right side, and the third scene, it is back completely around his neck again. *In the last scene, Aldo shoots Hermann. In the shot where he shoots Herrman it is seen that he falls facing away from Aldo, i.e. is the farthest away from Aldo. But later when Uitivich is scalping Herrman we see that Herrman's head is facing Aldo. This can be proved because Uitivich even looks up in Aldo's direction. *In the final scene, Landa is handcuffed by Utivich, but when he is being "marked" by Raine, his hands are free and gripping the grass. *In the last scene where Aldo is carving a swastika in Landa's forehead Aldo is carving the bottom of the Swastika to the left which is incorrect. In the next scene that mark is gone and he's correctly carving it to the right. Stolz der Nation *In the opening credits for "Stolz der Nation," Joseph Goebbels' name is spelled "Goebbles." This is easily visible both in the actual film and in the "Stolz der Nation" bonus film on the DVD. Gallery References Category:Inglourious Basterds